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Basketball: Crawford County Legend Remembered

Current Alma athletics director and former Airedale’s basketball coach Mike McSpadden is just one of the many coaches that Mountainburg coach Bob Denniston influenced during his coaching career.

“When I first started coaching, coach Denniston was a veteran and had been coaching many years,” McSpadden said. “He was always very nice and helped me out, visited with me and talked with me. He answered questions for me when I was first beginning my career. That’s something that I will always appreciate and will never forget.”

Denniston, 88, died last Friday.

“Coach Denniston was always a gentleman,” McSpadden said. “His teams were always well coached and very fundamentally sound. They always played with great effort. Win or lose, he was always very gracious and courteous and professional.”

He is one of the legends of Crawford County basketball and coached during the same era as Mulberry’s Cotton Havener, Alma’s Alene Crabtree and Van Buren’s Clair Bates.

McSpadden wanted to not only honor those coaches and teachers but keep their legacy alive by naming the girls and boys divisions after them when he revived the Crawford County Tournament two years ago.

“His roots in Crawford County basketball go way back to the 1940s,” McSpadden said. “When we revived the Crawford County Tournament, we felt very strongly that we needed to come up with some way to honor people like coach Denniston just because his connection to basketball in Crawford County goes back 60-plus years.”

Denniston graduated from Alma, playing on Clair Bates-coached teams that made successive state tournament appearances in 1940, 1941 and 1942 along with Gayle Kaundart. They lost in the championship game in 1941 to Beebe in the state’s largest classification. The following year, the Airedales lost to the great Jonesboro team in the second round that went 30-0.

Denniston went on to the College of the Ozarks and then served in World War II in the Navy and in the Korean War in the Army.

Denniston’s first teaching job was at Mulberry and left there for Hartman and his first coaching job. He then went to Prairie Grove where he started the state’s first six-man football team. He went back for four years to Mulberry, where he guided the Yellowjackets to the state championship in 1960 behind two-time all-stater Doug McKinney.

Denniston went to Harrison for six years and guided the Goblins to the state tournament all six years and to the championship game in 1961, 1965 and 1966. His 1961 team lost to Helena, who had future Razorbacks football players Bill Gray and Ken Hatfield. His 1962 team lost in the first round to Fort Smith High, whose head coach was Denniston’s former high school teammate, Kaundart. His 1965 team lost to Newport in the championship game and his 1966 team finished 31-1 after losing to Mountain Home in the championship game.Denniston was named the head coach for the West in the Arkansas High School Coaches Association All-Star game in 1966.

Denniston went to Morrilton for two years before spending the final 18 years of his 36-year coaching career at Mountainburg, taking the Dragons to the state tournament in first season in 1970.

Denniston retired from coaching in 1987 but still spent 14 more years driving a bus to round out his 50-year career in education.

“We were really good friends,” said former Mountainburg Superintendent Floyd Cagle. “We shared bird hunting as a love. There are some good stories there. The program had been down when he came here. When he took them to the state tournament his first year, that was a program builder.”

In 2004, Denniston was voted into the Arkansas High School Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

Friday, Mountainburg will have a brief memorial for Denniston between varsity basketball games.

Greenwood Gains Momentum

Greenwood evened its 7A/6A-Central record on Tuesday with a 61-45 win at Southside.

“It was a great win for us,” Greenwood head coach Brian Martin said. “These two conference games, we’ve played pretty well. We played pretty well against Parkview, and it gave us some confidence coming in against Southside. Our kids are showing a little more fight and confidence in themselves.”

The win was the third straight for the Bulldogs against the Rebels since joining the conference.

“Southside has turned into a good rivalry in all sports,” Martin said. “Our kids know their kids so that motivation is already there. Our kids were ready to play.”

Tuesday, Greenwood saw its 10-point halftime lead whittled down to 40-38 heading into the fourth quarter. The Bulldogs answered with 20 points in the final quarter by hitting 12-of-17 free throws. Evan Lensing hit 7-of-9 in the last quarter.

“We attacked a whole lot in the second half,” Martin said. “We took it to the rim and took high-percentage shots. We kept our composure when they made their run, and we put the game away in the fourth quarter.”

Greenwood will need that momentum as they host No. 3-ranked Little Rock Hall on Friday.

Clarksville Rolls Early

The Panthers rolled early on Tuesday to open 5A-West play with a 70-40 win at Greenbrier.Clarksville held Greenbrier to just two buckets in the first quarter and took a 23-4 lead.

“We wanted to set the tone early, offensively and defensively,” Clarksville head coach Tony Davis said. “We made every possession tough on them. We fed off that the rest of the night.”

Clarksville invoked the mercy rule with 20 points in the fourth quarter.

Clarksville plays its home conference opener on Friday against Shiloh Christian.

The Panthers are glad to be back home. During the Christmas break, they played in the Spa City Classic in Hot Springs and the Barry Pruitt Invitational in Jonesboro.

“We’re ready to get back to the friendly confines of Johnson County right now,” Davis said.

Alma Gets State Tournament

The Airedalettes and Airedales will host the state tournament in their final season in Class 5A.

Alma was the only 5A school to submit a bid. Bid deadline was last Thursday. The official announcement will be made today at 4 p.m. for all regional tournaments and state tournaments for all spring sports.

“We built this arena to host events like that,” Alma head coach Stan Flenor said. “We’re excited about hosting the state tournament. From a community stand point, our fans love doing it and watching basketball and helping out. I think we’ll do an outstanding job.”

The 5A tournament is one of the most exciting from start to finish of all of the state basketball tournaments because of how the teams are determined with only the top four finishers in the four conferences earns earning a berth.

“It is a qualifying tournament with a 14-game grind,” Flenor said. “You find your teams and then you line up and play against the other teams in the state. You’ve got to earn it. It is the purest of all of them.”